‘(3),’ he wrote. What was the third most insecure thing about her? There was something he didn’t much care for about her shortsightedness, and the thick spectacles she wore. Then again, the smoke from her fag perpetually made her eyes water, which presumably reduced her vision still further. And on top of that she had a hard smoker’s cough which racked her incessantly, and which must have hopelessly shaken about what little she could see. ‘(3),’ wrote Nunn. ‘Warped view of the world.’

It was rumoured that she liked whisky. Well, everyone liked whisky. Nunn liked whisky. But then, Nunn was forced to admit to himself, he didn’t wear pebble spectacles or have a cigarette which he called a fag dangling from the corner of his mouth. Then again, there was something vaguely improper about her. She might well have been described as an old maid. Yet her skirt rode up above her knees when she sat. She frequently sat with her knees a foot or two apart, so that for ten or fifteen minutes at a time Nunn could see all the way up to her knickers, which were often apple green, or sky blue, or even black. Somewhere inside that run-down outer shell, one could not help feeling, there might be a naked, lustful woman still loose, and the gruff voice that rasped on about fags and loads of bloody balls might be shouting down the faint echo of some randy warbling from within. ‘(4),’ wrote Nunn. ‘Immorality (?) leaves open to blackmail.’

All in all, not a sound type. Nunn drew a box round her name in the Horse of the Year Calendar. He drew a scalloped edging round the box, and a line of loops round the new box, and a box round the loops. Then he surrounded the whole thing with a picture frame, and the picture frame with more boxing, scalloping, and loops, and the expanded version with another picture frame. Leaning very close to see what he was doing, he began to shade in the gaps between alternate sets of borders. One thing worried him as he worked. He knew for sure from his long years of dealing with subversion that anyone who got up a petition was merely acting as a front for some more sinister figure who remained unidentified. That was the man he really had to get at. Nunn turned over the possible names in his head. Rowe? Mac­intosh? Not nice names, certainly, but did they really have the authentic ring of treachery? What about Goldwasser? Goldwasser . . . Goldwasser . . . There was certainly something about that name – something that rang a bell, something that sounded not quite right, something unsound. Nothing definite, of course – just an old security man’s little hunch.

Nunn added another to the list of Riddle’s defects. ‘(5) Goldwasser,’ he wrote.

15

Both Plushkov and Riddle spent a good deal of time in rallying support for their views on the official opening. It was difficult to see that they were having much effect. Plushkov’s lobbying merely flattered those who were already antipathetic to subversive egalitarianism and Riddle. Riddle’s efforts were ignored by everyone except those who already had honourable and ancient prejudices against royalty and Plushkov. There were only two exceptions to this general principle. One was Chiddingfold, who was tacitly recognised as a no man’s land between the two factions, and the other was Haugh, the Head of the Fashion Department.