His mind began to produce reason after reason why he was right not to phone. They would just take the phone off its hook without answering. If they did answer they would not believe him. Chiddingfold would answer it himself. Chiddingfold would be warned merely by hearing the phone ring, and would assassinate the Queen on the spot. Nevertheless, each time he heard the migration from one department to the next he picked up the phone and told himself he would do it; and each time he did not. He suffered the sharpest agonies when he heard everyone going across to the Ethics Wing. If he did not catch them there they would go on to the hardboard Refreshments Extension and be beyond his reach for ever. His eardrums were stretched so painfully tense that he believed he could hear the clink of the golden trowel on the commemoration stone, the whoof of the undying flame of remembrance lighting, the snip of the golden scissors, the click of the golden switch, the snick of the golden key. But he did not phone.

At last he heard the distant tramping as the crowd made its way across the courtyard from the Ethics Wing to the refreshments. His spirits sagged. He had failed absolutely and utterly. The tramping died away and ceased and was replaced by a great silence. The company had fallen to cucumber sandwiches and champagne. Goldwasser fell to brooding.

With shattering loudness and suddenness, the phone began to ring. Goldwasser started up with such nervous violence that he knocked the chair over. The phone which he had picked up six times and put down six times was ringing at him. Guiltily he fumbled it up and put it to his ear, unable to say a word.

‘I’ve an outside call for you, Mr. Nunn,’ said Zinnia on the switchboard. ‘I’ll put it through to you personally on this line, shall I? I’m putting you through to the Deputy-Director, caller.’

‘Hallo, Deputy-Director?’ said a man’s voice. ‘I have the Gentleman of the Airing Cupboard for you.’

‘The what?’ cried Goldwasser. There was no answer but a tele­phonic clicking.

With a new access of misery Goldwasser realised that he could have got through to the switchboard all the time.

‘Hallo, Deputy-Director?’ said the Gentleman of the Airing Cupboard. ‘I’ve got some good news for you. They’ve cleared up the trouble with the plane. Just an instrument fault. It took off again fifteen minutes ago, and Her Majesty should be with you in about thirty-five minutes from now.’

36

36

The ethics wing had been beautifully opened. All the right questions had been asked, all the right sentiments expressed. Among the wives sipping champagne in the Refreshments Extension after­wards the talk was of nothing but Nobbs.

‘She didn’t look anything like her photographs.’

‘She looked as if she had a sort of beard to me.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t the Queen.’

‘Wasn’t it?’