Outside the washroom door Nunn, the Deputy-Director, a squash racket under his arm, stood bent with his ear at the keyhole. He would not have Heads of Departments inviting other ranks into the washroom. It weakened discipline, and suggested the possibility of much more serious offences. Goldwasser again, of course. He looked in his Rugby Enthusiast’s diary. It was the fourth trip to the washroom Goldwasser had made this morning. It was only Jellicoe’s first visit, but he had been in there for nearly twenty minutes now.

Nunn was particularly pleased with the results of his spell at the washroom keyhole. It proved his contention that routine intelligence work often brought unexpected bonuses. If he hadn’t been listening to hear why Goldwasser was associating with other ranks, he wouldn’t have heard that the Queen was going to visit the Institute. That was a very valuable piece of information for the Institute’s authorities to have. He made a note in the diary under Size in Gloves. ‘Queen,’ he wrote, and turned back to the Last Train section, in which Goldwasser’s activities were noted. ‘Goldwasser,’ he wrote.

Goldwasser came out of the washroom. Nunn quickly straightened up.

‘Jolly good,’ he said, chuckling and squeezing Goldwasser’s arm. Then he walked noiselessly away up the corridor in his rubber badminton shoes.

3

‘Hugh Rowe,’ wrote Hugh Rowe, ‘is a brilliant new arrival on the literary scene. R is his first novel, and critics who have seen it prior to publication have hailed the author as ‘the most exciting new voice to become audible since the war,’ and ‘a dazzling new discovery who has achieved the staggering feat of uniting the sober density of Robbe-Grillet to the broad comic tradition of P. G. Wodehouse (for full list see back flap).’

Rowe stopped, and revolved his finger in his ear. Writing a novel was astonishingly hard work. He had reached this point a dozen times – the desk and floor were littered with rejected drafts – and he was finding it very difficult to get beyond it. He tried again.

‘R is the story of a whisky priest, tortured by the consciousness of having committed every sin, from blasphemy to murder, who is appalled by the ease with which he returns time and time again – as he knows with a deep inner conviction – to a state of grace.’

Rowe winced and pulled the sheet out of the typewriter. He started again.

‘R is the story of four men – a refugee dictator, an advertising copywriter, an alcoholic war-hero, and a class-conscious trade unionist – who find themselves marooned on a tiny island in the steaming heat of the Torres Strait. With them is a beautiful young society woman who was on her way to enter a nunnery . . .’

Rowe changed the paper.

‘R is the odyssey of a disillusioned writer who moves through a series of fantastic adventures – each offering a devastating satire of a different aspect of our society – in his search for R, a nebulous goal which is sometimes a city, sometimes a drug, sometimes a woman . . .’