The experience that followed could, he afterwards supposed, be compared to the popular belief about drowning. In that an impossible flood of thoughts crowded his brain. He thought, for instance, of how long it had taken him to write his book, of his knowledge that undoubtedly it was the best thing he had done, perhaps would ever do. He remembered his agent had once suggested that it was dangerous to write in longhand with no duplication. He remembered how isolated he was in Rome with virtually no Italian, and how he hadn’t bothered to use his introductions. He thought inaccurately of—who? Was it Sir Isaac Newton? ‘O, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what you have done!’ Above all he thought of the ineffable, the unthinkable, the atrocious boredom of what must now ensue: the awful prospect of taking steps as opposed to the numb desolation of his loss: the rock-bottom horror of the event itself which had caused a thing like a water-ram to pound in his thorax. A classic phrase stood up in his thoughts: ‘I am undone.’ And he almost cried it aloud.

Here, now, was the waiter, smirking and triumphant, and here at the kerbside, a horse-carriage with a great umbrella protecting the seats and a wary-looking driver with some sort of tarpaulin over his head.

Grant attempted to indicate his loss. He pointed to where his attaché case had been, he grimaced, he gesticulated. He groped for his phrase-book and thumbed through it. ‘Ho perduto,’ he said. ‘Ho perduto mia valigia. Have you got it? My case? Non trovo. Valigia.’

The waiter exclaimed and idiotically looked under the table and round about the flooded surroundings. He then bolted into cover and stood there gazing at Barnaby and shrugging with every inch of his person.

Barnaby thought: This is it. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

The driver of the horse-carriage hailed him mellifluously and seemed to implore him to make up his mind. He looked at the desolation around him and got into the carriage.

‘Consolato Britannico,’ Grant shouted. ‘O God! Consolato Britannico.’

III

‘Now look here,’ the Consul had said, as if Barnaby Grant required the information, ‘this is a bad business, you know. It’s a bad business.’

‘You, my dear Consul, are telling me.’

‘Quite so. Quite so. Now, we’ll have to see what we can do, won’t we? My wife,’ he added, ‘is a great fan of yours. She’ll be quite concerned when she hears of this. She’s a bit of an egg-head,’ he had jokingly confided.

Barnaby had not replied. He contemplated his fellow-Briton over a handful of lint kindly provided by the consular staff and rested his bandaged left hand upon his knee.